There was so much that Sabrina needed to do when she arrived back in Vallo--mainly check on Hell because apparently it was being uppity with her in the past--but her foremost focus was on finding Nick. She was worried about him, confused over why he’d been as terse and worried throughout the entire week, why he’d asked Roz to keep an eye on her. It felt like there was something else going on but he hadn’t been very forthtelling on anything that was happening back in the present day. Her annoyance had chipped away to confusion laced with an anxiety that she couldn’t quite shake.
Something had to have happened for him to be acting this way, right? There were too many possibilities for her to really narrow it down, but the urgency to see him had only heightened once they’d had an actual plan for getting home.
She appeared in the bathroom where she had been before being pulled into Ancient Vallo and immediately reached for her necklace around her neck, letting it pull her to wherever he might be.
“Nick?”
Nick was in hell. Literally. With the issues that they were having, he'd spent a good amount of time trying to keep the worst of it at bay, while trying to reign in the creatures that had escaped. But the moment he heard Sabrina's voice absolutely nothing else mattered, and he turned in her direction, his arms opening without hesitation as he drew her in and kissed her, everything else be damned.
It had been ten long days since he'd woken up with unwelcome memories and and her untimely trip to the past, with so many frustrated conversations and confusion, but none of that mattered to Nick now as he left no distance between them, and only when he came up for air did he greet her.
"Sabrina," he said, his voice flooded with relief. "Hi."
She blinked, hearing the relief in his voice, feeling it in the way he held her against him. There seemed to be so much weight to him, her worry only upping when she realized where they were. He was in Hell and she knew how that place made him feel, the struggle for him to be there. Sabrina didn’t want him there any longer than was necessary, teleporting the two out of Pandemonium and back to her room in the mortuary. She’d check in with the hounds later and deal with the harpies and other creatures causing a fuss then too.
He looked exhausted to her and she smoothed her fingers through his hair before pulling him into a tight hug. As annoyed as she’d been with him at times over the last few days she had missed him. She’d gotten so used to him being there when she went to bed and when she woke up, his body pressed up against hers, that she’d constantly reached out for him, finding only empty space.
“I’m here.”
For a moment, he lingered in that hug, forgetting everything else that was going on. The issues with hell had given him something to focus on, which had at least decreased the amount of time he'd spent scolding Sabrina for taking on too much. He couldn't explain himself, not fully and he didn't even try yet.
"Sabrina, we need to go back." He had tried, in her absence, to take care of things but it was Sabrina who held the power to right things now, the irony not lost on him.
Oh now she should be doing stuff?
She shook her head. She’d deal with Hell but she didn’t want him coming with her, not with how tired he seemed. Had he gotten any meaningful sleep or just passed out every so often when his body couldn’t handle being awake any longer? She had a feeling it was the latter. “You don’t need to go. You look like you’re dead on your feet, Nick.”
Not that she knew exactly how she was going to handle the harpies, but she could figure that out in a moment. She thought they would listen to her once she was in front of them. Well, hoped they would anyway.
Was he dead on his feet? Possibly. But he'd just gone ten long days without Sabrina and he didn't intend on letting her out of his sight. "I'll sleep when that's taken care of," he said. "And you can join me." Though maybe she needed to shower first, which as tired as he was he at least managed to not say out loud. "I've had the hounds rounding out as many of the harpies as they can," he added.
It wasn't as if they hadn't been doing nothing to try and solve the issue in Sabrina's absence and he was already inclined to see it through, even if it did require Sabrina's involvement.
Sabrina didn’t want their first interaction back together to be a fight. There had been enough tension between the two of them that she still didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she was ever going to fully be able to comprehend. Dealing with the harpies would probably go a lot quicker with him at her side helping anyway.
About two hours later they had dealt with the remainder of the Hellish creatures and secured the magical barriers that were always supposed to keep them locked in, plus managed to shower away the grime and guts from the past and the creatures. They were currently laying down on her bed, sleep something that still wasn’t quite happening, and Sabrina turned onto her side so she could get a better look at him. As if maybe if she kept doing so it would help her figure out what was going on in his head currently and what had been for the past week.
It didn’t help.
“Better?” Because she thought he looked a little less distraught than when she’d first found him.
As tired as Nick was, Sabrina's return had restored some of his energy and he wasn't ready to fall asleep again just yet, knowing the last time they'd gone to sleep together the waking up bit had been horrific.
But yes, he was feeling better. Writing back and forth could not make up for having her there with him, especially in reassuring him that she was alright, and very much alive. "Yes," he said quietly. "I know it seemed I overreacted earlier." He really didn't know how to address that, not in a way that didn't reveal too much, but he also knew she'd been worried and that he'd annoyed her more than once. And if he acted like he was avoiding things again, that would only cause more friction between them.
It was a delicate balance, but even if he thought she should know what he'd dreamt, he was not ready to have that conversation.
Sabrina wasn’t sure how much she wanted to push for an explanation. They hadn’t ever been separated by Vallo before, maybe this was just how he was going to react when that sort of thing happened. It wasn’t like being away from each other while at school or doing different things on their own. It was days on end of not seeing one another and she knew she’d hated it. She’d just tried throwing herself into keeping busy by helping people. Unfortunately that only seemed to cause Nick more stress.
She knew she did some reckless things, that trouble had a way of finding her, and she was trying not to take on every little thing in Vallo. Finding a balance for that was hard, especially when everything was thrown off kilter.
“You really worried me.” It was the truth. “I know we haven’t actually been separated while we’ve been here and I know my dad was a nervous wreck too when I talked to him, but…” She wasn’t even sure where she was going with that. “You just really worried me.”
"I got caught up in the idea that you might not make it back," Nick said quietly, a completely honest answer even if it left out the reasons that pushed him to think that way. "And there was just so much distance between us. I'm not used to that."
He offered her a hint of a smile. "My therapist said I talked more than I ever have? At my second session last week." Which was his way of bringing up the fact that he had sought out help, but he was also trying to explain his behavior away until he could figure out what to do with the knowledge he had. Thinking about that too long made his head swim.
She was glad he’d gone to therapy, twice even. Sabrina knew how much that could help quell the anxiety that could stir up in her at times and he had seemed less frantic as time had gone on. Still an undercurrent of worry that made her worry, but it wasn’t as bad as those first few days had been.
Sabrina reached over, brushing her fingers through his hair. “I’m glad you went to her and that talking to her helps.” She hadn’t been all that trusting of the process at first, confident she’d go to one session and then never return. Thankfully that hadn’t been the case and she was grateful it seemed to be helping out Nick too. Their lives back home had been a mess and just because they weren’t in their world any longer didn’t mean the trauma from there didn’t still affect them.
“I wasn’t a fan of the distance between us either.”
"I'm glad you're home," Nick replied, not having used the word deliberately, but he meant it fully all the same. This was home, and the only home they had. But Sabrina was home, and that meant he could finally relax, aided on by Sabrina's gesture.
"Let's not do that again?" he asked, like they had any say in it at all.
If Sabrina had any say in it they never would have been separated in the first place. “Not if I can help it.” Which she couldn’t, but the thought was there all the same.
Vallo was home for her as well, even if she didn’t know anything about her future back in their world. She’d dug in plenty of roots, created a life for herself there and had already begun plotting out how her future was going to change, how their future was going to alter. Vassar was off the table, but there was the witchy college and maybe one of the non-witchy ones in a couple of decades. There was magic to learn and a life to keep building, an apartment for just the two of them in a couple of years if she got her way.
She loved everyone in the mortuary, but it would be nice to have some space that was just theirs for a little bit. So many dreams that she meant to live out and explore.
Sabrina touched his necklace. “We’ll always find one another though, remember?”
Nick had known that Sabrina had used her necklace to find him, and he'd known before Vallo had delivered their necklaces that he'd wanted them made for just that purpose. But when she touched the locket around his neck now, he flinched slightly.
Because now he knew what he'd ended up using his for in their world.
"It has limits," he said, hoping desperately that was enough to explain himself.
She frowned at both his words and that small movement, picking up on it with how close they were. Her worry that had never really left renewed though, making a mental note to talk to Dan later and see if he had any ideas for how she could help ease the anxiety that Nick seemed to have developed. Maybe it would be best if they stopped talking and just laid in the bed for a bit.
She scooted closer to him, pressing a kiss to his chest before she rested her head against it. “I’m home.”
As Sabrina moved closer, Nick relaxed a bit more. "Did you miss having your pillow around?" he asked with a faint smile, trying not to think about anything else.
She chuckled at that. “Straw filled ones are just not the same. Plus you’re warm and it was cold there at night.” With scratchy blankets that itched and were too thin to offer any real protection. “Also Claire kicks.”
"Good to know I rank above straw, Spellman," he teased. "Also I'm glad Claire was with you and Dan the entire time." He was glad Allison would finally be able to sleep decently after the stress of the last week and a half.
He was also going to sleep decently, and that was going to be sooner rather than later, his entire body relaxing with Sabrina there, making it harder for him to stave off sleep and stay awake no matter how much he wanted to lay there and enjoy her presence.
And somewhere an irrational fear was starting to take hold that he'd wake up and once more find she had disappeared.
Sabrina fell asleep easily, curling up further against him as Salem and Shadow found their way onto the bed and settled into their usual spots as well. The hounds took up spaces on the floor with the little hellish lizard laying on her bedside table. She’d been missed and they all wanted to be nearby.
She woke early the next morning, the sun beginning to peek through the windows and pressed her face into Nick’s neck, not at all ready to move just yet.
Nick felt Sabrina stir, waking him up, when it dawned on him that she was still there. "Hey," he said quietly, not moving except to trace his fingertips along her arm, confirmation she was there and hadn't disappeared. He could probably fall back asleep if he wanted, but he didn't want to miss this moment after being separated for so long.
“Hey,” she murmured back, lips tugging into a smile as she slowly opened her eyes. “This is a much better way of waking up than being kicked in the side by a six year old.” Even if Salem was flicking his tail into her face.
"Better than waking up to Salem staring at me in displeasure that you weren't back yet, either," Nick agreed, as the cat seemingly ignored his complaints. "And I will never get tired of waking up with you right here," he said quietly. Vallo better leave them alone, because this was the life he wanted, and the two of them deserved to live, and long and full lives at that. He didn't mind if they occasionally found themselves in strange circumstances.